MATTHEW OF WESTMINSTER
The flowers of history, especially such as relate to the affairs of Britain. Vol. I. B.C. 4004 to A.D. 1066.
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soldiers on the one side, on the other the Jews who were hemmed in had leisure for defence. In the meantime, miserable famine attacked the besieged, so much. that the whole city was filled with corpses. Sons tore the food from the mouths of their parents, and parents from those of their sons ; some tore to pieces the carcases of horses, others stripped off the bark of trees. Mothers roasted their own children and drowned them ; many fed on the vomiting and dung of others. And so four years passed from the time that siege was first laid to the city. Titus ascended the walls, not without great loss on the side of his army, and obtained possession o f the fortifications of the city, polluted the temple and the Holy of Holies, plundered the sacred vessels, and distributed the gold and silver and precious stones among his soldiers.
At last the Romans, weary with the enormous slaughter, sought for men to whom the captive slaves might be sold ; but because they were very many to be sold, and few buyers were found, thirty slaves were sold for one piece of money. But ninety-seven thousand captives were led away, and some of them were even thrown to wild beasts to be eaten by them. This last destruction of the temple happened eleven hundred and two years after its foundation ; and the city was burnt on the eighth day of the seventh month, and the temple was utterly destroyed. And these things were done at the time of the solemnity of Easter, which the Jews used to call Pascha. For it was fitting that they should be slaughtered on those same days of Pascha in which they had ignominiously scourged the Saviour of the world, who would have been their own Saviour too if they had been willing, and hung him on the cross. The Lord himself showed in àie Gospel that this destruction would take place, when he wept over the city of Jerusalem, saying, " The days will come upon thee, and thy enemies shall surround thee with a trench, and shall dash thee to the ground, and thy sons who are in thee, and shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation."
At the same time, Linus, the second pope, succeeded Peter the Apostle in the chair at Borne, and sat in it eleven years, three months, and twelve days.
A.D. 72. Judaea, having been subdued by Titus, and Jerusalem having been destroyed, a dispersion of the Jews over

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